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 Chapter 2

A modern society has vast informational needs, and a Nation as large as the United States and its territories contains many different kinds of geographic situations and settlement patterns. To respond to these needs and provide statistical data for these diverse situations and patterns, the geographic programs at the Census Bureau include several kinds of entities. This ensures that the Census Bureau can effectively (1) conduct complete enumerations, sample surveys, and other statistical programs, and (2) tabulate, publish, and disseminate to data users, the results of its censuses, surveys, and other statistical programs.

In its data collection operations, the Census Bureau must assign each person, household, housing unit, institution, farm, business establishment, or other responding entity to a specific location, and then assign that location to the tabulation units appropriate to the particular census or sample survey. This geographic coding (geocoding) process assures that the Census Bureau can provide correct counts for small geographic entities, and that both the Census Bureau and data users can accumulate the data for small entities to provide totals for larger geographic entities. Geography, then, is a basic element of the Census Bureau’s system for organizing and presenting statistical data to the public.

There are numerous geographic entities for which the Census Bureau tabulates data (see and ). Data users have a stake in the kinds of geographic areas for which the Census Bureau tabulates data. The Census Bureau uses two widely known entities, States and counties, in almost all its censuses, sample surveys, and other programs. Some geographic entities, however, appear in only a few data tabulations or are available only in machine-readable data summaries.

Regardless of their relative importance, the Census Bureau classifies all geographic entities into two broad categories: legal and administrative entities and statistical entities. Legal and administrative entities generally originate Geographic Overview2-1